Independence

Political advancement tended to lag behind economic and social development, especially in the south (for the role of the Northern Territories was principally the supply of cheap labour for the Gold Coast and Asante). World War II, to which the Gold Coast contributed many men and materials, accentuated this lag, and in 1948 there were riots of workers and veterans in the larger towns. The Watson Commission of Inquiry reported that the Burns constitution of 1946, which had granted Africans a majority in the legislative council, was “outmoded at birth.” An all-African committee under Justice (later Sir James Henley) Coussey was appointed to work out a new constitution in which some executive power would be transferred to African ministers responsible to an African assembly. Meanwhile, a radical politician, Kwame Nkrumah, had established the Convention People’s Party (CPP), which, with wide popular support, campaigned with strikes and other actions under the slogan “Self-government now.” In 1951 the CPP won almost all the elective seats in the post-Coussey legislative assembly, whereupon Gov. Sir Charles Arden-Clarke invited Nkrumah to lead the new administration. A partnership developed between the two, so power was rapidly transferred to an all-African cabinet responsible to a popularly elected national assembly.

In 1956 the trust territory of British Togoland (seeTogoland) chose by United Nations plebiscite to integrate with the Gold Coast. Having secured some 70 percent of the assembly seats in general elections in 1954 and 1956, Nkrumah and the CPP government were able in 1957 to obtain the recognition of their country, renamed Ghana, as an independent self-governing member of the Commonwealth and a member of the United Nations.

Nkrumah saw independent Ghana as a spearhead for the liberation of the rest of Africa from colonial rule and the establishment of a socialist African unity under his leadership. After the founding of a republic in 1960, the state became identified with a single political party (the CPP), with Nkrumah, as life president of both, taking ever more power for himself. On the Pan-African front Nkrumah’s messianism was increasingly challenged by other leaders of an ever-growing number of independent states. By 1966 his dream of African socialism was foundering under haphazard and corrupt administration, massive foreign debts, and declining living standards. In February, while Nkrumah was in Beijing, army and police leaders rose against him, and his regime was replaced by a National Liberation Council chaired by Lieut. Gen. Joseph A. Ankrah. The machinery of government was overhauled and conservative financial policies introduced. But Ankrah failed to redeem a promise to restore parliamentary democracy, and in 1969 he gave way to the dynamic young brigadier Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa, a principal leader of the coup. A constituent assembly produced a constitution for a second republic, and a general election was held in August 1969. This resulted in a substantial victory for the Progress Party, led by Kofi Busia, a university professor who had consistently opposed Nkrumah. Busia became prime minister, and a year later a former chief justice, Edward Akufo-Addo, was chosen president.

But the civilian regime, handicapped by the great burden of foreign debt it had inherited and the low prices then obtained by cocoa on the world market, was slow to produce the results expected of it. In January 1972 impatient army officers intervened again, and the government was taken over by a National Redemption Council (NRC) of military men chaired by Col. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. The national assembly was dissolved, public meetings prohibited, political parties proscribed, and leading politicians imprisoned. In July 1972 a retroactive Subversion Decree was enacted under which military courts were empowered to impose the death penalty for offenses such as subversive political activity, robbery, theft, and damaging public property, and, from 1973, for the spreading of rumours and profiteering. The military regime was clearly failing to maintain good order or anything approaching a prosperous or stable economy. Ghana’s gross domestic product, export earnings, and living standards began a precipitous decline.

In 1975 the NRC was reorganized to include some civilians, but ultimate power was given to a Supreme Military Council (SMC). In 1977 the SMC proposed a “Union Government to which everybody will belong,” with no political parties and the military sharing in government with civilians. But a national referendum held to approve this served mainly to show the unpopularity of the SMC. Acheampong was replaced as SMC chairman by Lieut. Gen. Frederick W.K. Akuffo, who was less effective in governing than his predecessor. Eventually, in 1979, as the economy floundered, the government of the generals was overthrown by young officers and noncommissioned officers, led by an air force flight lieutenant, Jerry Rawlings. Acheampong and Akuffo were executed, and a quick return to parliamentary government was organized. But under Pres. Hilla Limann this failed to produce the radical improvements in the political and economic life of Ghana sought by Rawlings and his colleagues. At the end of 1981, Rawlings decided that he and those who thought like him must take the lead in all walks of life, and he again overthrew the government. His second military coup established a Provisional National Defense Council as the supreme national government; at local levels, people’s defense committees were to take the campaign for national renewal down to the grass roots.

On Dec. 31, 1981, Jerry Rawlings overthrew Ghana's government for a second time.Stock footage courtesy The WPA Film Library

Initially, older Ghanaians doubted that Rawlings and his colleagues could provide more effective and less self-interested government than the old politicians or generals, while other young soldiers thought that they could themselves engineer coups to secure the fruits of power. But Rawlings easily snuffed out two countercoups in 1982 and 1983, and it was apparent that there was wide and genuine approval of his purpose of reforming Ghana’s political and economic life. This continued even when he decided that there was no alternative but to follow conservative economic policies—such as dropping subsidies and price controls in order to reduce inflation, privatizing many state-owned companies, and devaluing currency in order to stimulate exports—that would secure International Monetary Fund (IMF) support and other foreign aid. These free-market measures revived Ghana’s economy, which by the early 1990s had one of the highest growth rates in Africa.

In 1992, in the first presidential balloting held in Ghana since 1979, Rawlings—representing a new party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC)—was elected president. He was reelected to a second term in 1996 with almost three-fifths of the vote. Despite the economic progress that had been made during Rawlings’s rule, much of the Ghanaian press and many Ghanaian professionals remained highly critical of his economic policies and authoritarian political style.

Rawlings stepped down from the presidency in early 2001 and was succeeded by John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the first peaceful transfer of power between democratically elected governments since Ghanaian independence in 1957; Kufuor was reelected in 2004. In the December 2008 presidential elections, the NPP’s candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, won the first round of voting but did not secure a majority of the vote. John Evans Atta Mills of the NDC went on to narrowly defeat Akufo-Addo by less that one percentage point in a runoff election fraught with tension. Still, there was a peaceful transfer of power, which was heralded by many observers as proof of Ghana’s democratic stability.

John Agyekum Kufuor, 2001.Eric Draper/The White House

Mills died in office on July 24, 2012, near the end of his term. Vice Pres. John Dramani Mahama was sworn in as interim president later that day. He later was selected to be the NDC’s presidential candidate in the December 7, 2012, election. Mahama faced seven other candidates, including Akufo-Addo, who again represented the NPP. The electoral commission declared that Mahama was the winner with 50.7 percent of the vote—just enough to avoid having a runoff election with Akufo-Addo, who trailed him with 47.74 percent. Before the results were released, however, the NPP had already made allegations of electoral fraud. After the electoral commission declared Mahama the winner, the NPP filed a petition with the Supreme Court to challenge the results. The court’s verdict, issued on August 29, 2013, dismissed the NPP’s petition and upheld Mahama’s victory; Akufo-Addo accepted the outcome. Meanwhile, Mahama had been sworn in for his first full term as president earlier that year, on January 7.

Mahama presided over a period of growing discontent caused by a weakening economy—partly due to declining prices on Ghana’s main exports and growing public wage costs—as well as power shortages and corruption scandals. To address the country’s economic problems, in 2015 the government received a financial assistance package from the IMF to support economic reform.

One of the scandals that rocked the country broke in 2015 when a journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, released the results of his two-year investigation into corruption in Ghana’s judicial system. Some 180 judges, magistrates, and other judicial officials were caught on video demanding money from litigants and accepting bribes. Subsequent investigations by the country’s Judicial Council resulted in the dismissal of dozens of the accused, including some High Court judges.

The economy and corruption were two of the main themes during the campaign for the 2016 presidential election. The December 7 poll saw a rematch between Mahama, representing the NDC, and Akufo-Addo, representing the NPP; they were the leading candidates of a field of seven that also included former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, representing the National Democratic Party (NDP). Akufo-Addo was declared the winner with almost 54 percent of the vote; Mahama, who followed him with about 44 percent, conceded.